Newnan -The City That’s Home
Written by Jenny Enderlin
The Farmer-Fisher family came together in their ancestral home last year to share stories and strengthen family ties.
Newnan is known as “The City of Homes” because its houses were not burned in the Civil War like those in many Georgia towns.
But I like to think of Newnan as “The City That’s Home.”
Whether you’re an original Newnanite or a transplant like me, living here feels like walking inside a Norman Rockwell painting.
My husband Chuck and I discovered Newnan 10 years ago when we were looking to settle permanently after his Marine Corps service. We were intrigued by Newnan’s perfect blend of modern conveniences and small-town atmosphere.
The first day of our exploration downtown, I grabbed my husband’s arm and said, “You get a job at Delta, we’ll buy one of these old houses, and we’ll live here forever!”
Jenny and Chuck Enderlin, with their daughters Bethany, left, and Lainey, prepare to welcome members of the Fisher and Farmer families visiting the 1907 house family members called home.
He looked at me in shock. I never make sudden decisions, but Newnan has the quaint charm of a Hallmark movie. How could we say no to its allure?
We looked at a dozen historic houses, admiring the exceptional craftsmanship of each. When we walked through the doors of a certain two-story Edwardian house on Greenville Street, however, we knew we’d found our forever home.
The sunlight flitting through the wavy glass windows made the dark wood gleam. Miraculously left unpainted after all these years, the house sported gorgeous millwork on the built-in cabinetry, sliding doors and unusual three-landing staircase jutting into the foyer.
The spacious rooms flowed into one another beautifully, ideal for our habit of frequent entertaining. The pockmarked plaster walls and aged wood floors gave the home a rich patina which was fine by us. We didn’t want a pristine showhouse. We wanted a family home that exudes warmth.
We selected antiques at estate sales and marked our growing children’s heights on the kitchen door frame. I learned to sew custom curtains for the otherwise impossible-to-accommodate ceiling heights, and my husband became proficient at woodworking. The more we made the house our own, though, the more we found ourselves wanting to unravel its origins.
According to McRitchie-Hollis Museum Director Larisa Scott, most of Newnan’s older homes feature bargeboard, doorknobs, window sashes and other hardware created by the local R.D. Cole Manufacturing Company, which closed in 1968.
The Newnan-Coweta Historical Society keeps records of many historic addresses, and we learned our house was built in 1907 by the Fisher-Farmer family who lived in the home into the 1950s.
Still, what was life like here during different eras, and whose hands wore the stair rail smooth over the past century?
Our only clues were a black and white photograph and a book entitled “Dear Mama” left to us by the previous owner. The former depicted the original couple who built the home, Tom and Corille Fisher, along with their two oldest children. The latter was a compilation of letters from the couple’s son George to his mother during World War II; he obviously longed for home. After he died, his daughter Jenny Cummins discovered the letters and assembled the book. Upon reading it, I felt compelled to write to her in Seattle.
Cummins recently explained: “Reading all those letters gave me a whole new sense of love for the house – and also for Newnan. Transcribing them recreated Newnan of the 1940s through his eyes, and that got me interested in going back to the house. I could see how much that house meant to my father’s family.”
My husband and I connected with two of Cummins’s relatives who grew up in the home, Hugh Farmer and his uncle Tom Farmer, the 90-year-old grandson of the original owners.
After my husband and I completed tornado repairs and a five-month rewire of the house to purge it of its fire hazardous first-generation knob-and-tube, we invited them and a few dozen of their closest relatives for a homecoming.
They came from Florida, Washington, New York, various cities in Georgia and the neighborhood just around the corner.
It was surreal meeting the descendants of those who once lived here, especially since a number of them carry their ancestors’ names. For several, it was the first time seeing the family home.
“What I appreciated was just the support we had from the younger generation,” says Hugh. “My goodness! To see them drive from all over to come be a part of it. Some of the cousins had only met once or twice in their lives. It meant a lot to me to see them come and experience that.”
“It meant so much not only to be with the family that I love and cherish, but also to be in the very house where I spent many happy days during my childhood,” says Louise Parham.
It was a day of mutual Southern hospitality. We opened our doors and, in turn, the Fisher-Farmer family generously shared their recollections and presented us with two priceless gifts: Jenny Cummins put together a new book with pictures revealing what the family and house looked like over the years, and Tom graciously gifted us a former kerosene lamp, a wedding gift to his grandparents.
Tom said to put it anywhere, but somehow it just belongs in the same window where it resided 100 years ago. We agreed wholeheartedly that the lamp is to stay with the house in perpetuity.
When you live in an older home, the phrase “if walls could talk,” often comes to mind, but on that Sunday afternoon in September, they did.
Hugh, now in his 70s, noted the three-door wardrobe he hid in as a child and reminisced about the family’s evenings on the front porch.
Jenny and her cousin Louise recollected playing with a spinning wheel on the staircase landing as if it were the prow of a ship, and Jenny remembered watching Queen Elizabeth’s coronation on her grandmother’s sitting room TV, which was the size of a steamer trunk.
Tom pointed out the mysterious closet beneath the stairs as the place where liquor was kept hidden during Prohibition. He told of how President Roosevelt frequently rode past the house from the Newnan Train Depot on his way to Warm Springs. He shared memories of his grandmother Corille’s Christmas tradition of waking early to start the fire in the sitting room before the family’s breakfast.
“Everyone was happy and it was just good times,” says Tom.
Thinking back to his grandmother who went by the moniker Big Mama, he recalls, “She was just remarkable in many ways. People addressed her as Big, not referring to her size, but to her heart.”
Tom likes what subsequent owners have done with the house over the years. But foremost in mind when he thinks of this house is “the closeness, living on the porch, people coming to visit, and the more relaxed time when I was young.”
As my husband and I sit on the swing watching our own children play, I like to think that our two daughters will one day recall with equal fondness the house, family, and community in which they’ve grown up.
There certainly is something unique about Newnan, and we’re grateful to be here. NCM